Monday, March 9, 2009

Interventions

Another week has ended, and a new one begun. Saturday afternoon I was at a friend's house, when his children began squabbling. The oldest, Brad, is a tough kid in a lot of ways, but tends to be abusive, manipulative, and cries if he's even addressed regarding misconduct. He was put in time out for a few minutes because he had been poking his two sisters with a stick.

Now, suicide is a serious issue. Claiming to want to commit suicide in an attempt to get your way when you're eight years old will not fly. When Brad started saying, "I'm gonna kill myself," as he sat in the chair in the back yard, I walked outside.

The weather has warmed up nicely in the last few days, but pools haven't had time to really elevate their temperatures much- which means the pool was extremely cold when I tossed him in the deep end. The kid can swim, and I was ready in case he suddenly forgot how, but I thought it might change his mental state. He came up spluttering and swam to the edge, mumbling even faster:

"I'm gonna kill myself, I'm gonna kill myself."

Sploosh! I pushed him back into the middle of the pool. He came back up singing a different tune. "I'm not gonna kill myself, I'm not gonna kill myself."

I got him dried off, gave him a change of clothes, and took him and his sisters for a walk. Kids.

7 comments:

Maybe that will work for my 50 some-odd year old friend who has said for the past 6 months that she's going to kill herself. After calling friends and the cops the first few times, we just quit. I think I'm going to throw her in the pool.

Yep: I had a friend who was going to kill himself over his cheating wife. He even had the hose set up to gas himself in the garage. I asked him to hold off and sent him a loaded .45acp fed-ex. He later said that as soon as the delivery guy handed him the package and he realized how crazy his friend was, he felt sane by comparison and straightened right up.